Smartphone Games Relieve More Stress Than Mindfulness Apps, Study Says

There was a study done recently by the University College London and The University of Bath that shows smartphone games relieve more stress than mindfulness apps that are designed to relieve your stress.

Study Finds writes that way this study was executed was with two different experiments. With experiment one, they took 45 students and had them complete "a 15-minute math test and were then given either a smartphone game, a mindfulness app, or a fidget spinner for 10-minutes to help them unwind." The study found that people who played a game still felt alert afterward and not tired. People who used a mindfulness app or fidget spinner felt more tired.

In the second experiment, they took 20 students and had them either play a shape-fitting game (like Tetris) or a mindfulness app after working a 5 day week. The students who played the game "reported feeling significantly more relaxed and in control at the end of the week compared to the meditation app users."

You can see the whole study, it was published in the scientific journal JMIR Mental Health.